She reached the funeral parlour on the corner with the growl of the Westway at her back. The houses were yellow and blue and some of their lintels were crumbling. The traffic lined up in queues, and she heard the low moan of brakes. But really, she added, we’re nearly in the suburbs. She stared intently at the rooms she passed, seeing an African woman with her hair scraped into a bun, spreading out sheets on a bed, and a Middle Eastern man tying back the curtains of a bedsit — she could see the bed behind him and beyond that the shabby frame of an ancient cooker. He caught her staring and she looked away.
Everything was named for outmoded pastoralism — Oxford Gardens, St Michael’s Gardens, Ladbroke Grove. There was a sign pointing left, saying EQUAL PEOPLE. So that’s where they live, she thought, moving past. The houses on this road were Victorian, with pillars and grand windows. They were haughty in the cold sunlight. There was a mural on the side of one row, an image of stairs ascending to a celestial place. Even here they were bugging her with thoughts of eternity. Meanwhile she nodded at the blue plaque which said ‘Phiz lived here’, nailed to a house with yellowing curtains, a neon light by the door. Now she could see the Trellick Tower with washing on the balconies like semaphore flags. A pair of men who were covered in paint and a kid with a hood slung over his eyes. There was a blue sign saying offices to let, and a man saying ‘Fuck shit’ to the open air, and the number 52 was shuddering past. Beyond the prophet on the corner was the roundabout where everything looked ruined, patched in pinks and blues. There was the cheap call centre, the takeaway with its plastic pictures of faded food in the windows, a set of banished office blocks, and on a low wall running up to the red steel bridge she saw TEMP again, and a billboard saying HERE COME THE TEARS. Her mouth filled with fumes; the air was thick with the smell of petrol. Rosa always turned the corner wheezing, vowing to get out of the city. Her street had a few Victorian houses, stranded amid rubble and nothing, as if the row had been bombed and never rebuilt. On the other side of the street was a high-rise block. There was a hoarding further away, decorated with leftover scraps of former posters. One day they had pasted a sign up saying ARMAGEDDON. It was a huge hint from God. The back windows of Jess’s flat had a view of the receding parallels of train tracks, coated with moss, and a red steel bridge. To the west was a gas tower like an abandoned shrine and a burial mound of rubble.
Her mouth was dry and she could smell her own breath. Somehow the door came closer and closer until she could see the peeling paint and the small bare garden and then she dropped her keys. She scrabbled in the earth thinking it is today and I am the mother god. When the door opened she felt faint for a moment and stumbled in the hall. At the door to the flat she paused and wondered if she heard a movement within. That made her heart thump madly in her breast. She had avoided Jess for days, but it was never certain when she would be at home. She was holding the handle, but she couldn’t twist it. Then she heard a noise and the door swung open.
*
When she regained her focus, she saw Jess had a steely gaze and a resolute air. She was by the table, a Marlboro Light in one hand. Jess was dressed in pristine cream, she had a first-rate brain, and she commanded a decent salary that she had used to buy a flat in no-man’s-land. Jess was a guardian, tending her own personal shrine to normality. She was standing straight-backed, making herself as tall as she could. She stood with her cigarette in one hand, the other hand in her pocket, eyeing Rosa calmly. Then she tossed back her glossy hair; Jess was defined completely by her brown mane. Rosa had never seen her naked face; it was always half-concealed by hair. Jess lined herself up with the window, and cast a reluctant glance towards her. By God, you are a redoubtable foe, and I concede before the contest, thought Rosa. She had nothing in her armoury at all, nothing to say, and no way to defend herself. Besides, her head hurt. She knocked something off the table, a bottle of something, and it rolled away, under the sofa. Something to sort out later.
‘Rosa, now we’ve coincided, let’s go and have brunch,’ said Jess in a flinty tone. ‘I’ve been working from home this morning. Now I have to go into work. Let’s grab a bite to eat while I’m on my way. We need to talk about a couple of things. Have you got time now?’
That was clearly ironic, and Rosa rose with a sense of foreboding, staggering under it, or under the weight of something else she couldn’t identify. ‘Of course. Just have to wash my face,’ she said, her throat tight. Jess nodded, as if she understood Rosa’s reluctance, commended it as a fair assessment of the situation. ‘I have to drop off some dry cleaning. I’ll meet you at Café 204 in twenty minutes,’ she said tersely, and stalked out of the door.
In the bathroom Rosa put her head under the tap and washed her face. She rubbed the condensation from the mirror and looked at herself — mostly unchanged — wry smile, deliberately cultivated at fourteen, thin face, pale cheeks, dark eyes, nothing unattractive about her, older of course, but her family aged well, their cheekbones grew more chiselled and their jaws kept their lines, and their fat turned to scrag. Recently she had noticed deep lines across her brow, a sceptical puckering of the skin. A vein had burst on her cheek, but there was nothing else that singled her out. She looked well enough. Slightly anaemic, but she had always looked bloodless. The bags under her eyes were swarter by the day, but that was to be expected. Anyway, swart was just her colour. ‘Amor fati,’ she said to the mirror, the steamed up smear in front of her. ‘There’s no happy ending anyway.’ Through the narrow window of the bathroom she saw the feathery texture of the sky. Later the sun might shine on the city, brightening the grey fronts of the Georgian houses and the dusty terraces. There would be a smell of the approach of winter and dried out petrol and she would walk in Kensington Gardens and watch sunlight skimming on the surface of the water and people playing football in the grass. If she went to the interview and did well, she thought, then she would take a book to a quiet corner of the park and read for a while.
Now she turned off the taps. The pipes made a low groan. She took a towel from the rack and smelt it. She used it sparingly on her skin. Because Jess had already gone out, she drew the curtains and dressed quickly in the living room, looking round at the familiar objects, silhouettes in the half-light. In the corner she saw the diodes of a stereo, glinting like rubies. She could see Jess’s coat hanging on the half-open door like a timid man too nervous to approach. Then, prepared to beg, she walked out onto the street.
She caught up with Jess at a café on Portobello Road, a place where they sold designer clothes and food at the same time. The waiters passed their time sniffing down the menus, styling themselves on Satan and his minions. In the designer kitchens of Beelzebub they were dishing up much-adorned plates. Everyone in there was well clad, loaded with the latest styles. Even the brunch was as elegant as anything. Rosa didn’t care about the contrasts. It was only when she had eaten half her salmon and eggs that she understood she was there to receive advice. Jess was a small, precise person, who always thought before she spoke. She had been generous for months. Now Rosa’s whole Weltanschauung, to give it a name it hardly merited, was wearing thin. They ate toast and failed to talk seriously until a second round of coffees came. Then Jess — who was a kindly person and really quite hated to kick people in the teeth — said, ‘Rosa, I brought you here to suggest that you take a break. Why not go away for a while? A change of scene. How about it?’ She was twirling a napkin round her neat little fingers.